What I want to be when I grow up

I got the manicure last week.  My nails are neon pink with little white flowers that have glittery silver centers.  They are so beautiful and tacky and it only cost me 4 American dollars to get a hand-painted design that took a full hour to complete.  It was a good time killer but I’m still on the lookout for any nail fungus.  When I first biked past this particular nail salon I thought it looked legit, but once I was inside I realized it truly wasn’t.  It was filthy and all of the implements were sitting naked in glass cups, not swimming in blue cleaning fluid like they are in America.  

Oh and I also realized once inside that most of the clientele were prostitutes who worked in two brothels that flanked the salon.  They were really loud and joking around, not like typical Chinese women, and they all were done up to the nines, many of them with white faces—not geisha style but just foundation that was a couple of shades off.  I don’t get the appeal.  Whitening creams are everywhere for women trying to bleach their faces.  When I was in the convenience store I somehow managed to communicate to a saleslady that I was looking for some makeup to cover blemishes and she was trying to push this kind with face whitening on me and I was like do I LOOK like I need that?  In nighttime pictures with flash I am nose-less and glowing.

The brothels here are everywhere and somewhat inconspicuous, much different than what I experienced in Amsterdam with clearly demarcated zones and a red light just in case the half-nude woman standing in the window wasn’t a clear enough indication.  The two brothels on this road, a non-sketchy road with a big shoe store across the street and the town’s main grocery store a block away, were rooms with storefront windows and filled with couches with bored looking women sitting or standing around talking, eating sunflower seeds, or doing their nails.  In the back there is a curtained off room.  The women aren’t wearing anything out of the ordinary usually.  No fishnet tights or wacky wigs.  Just a sweater and jeans.  Sometimes a dress.

When I wanted to get a massage last week I was afraid to go into the parlors I passed because I didn’t know which ones were fronts and which ones were legitimate.  These are the trickier forms of brothels.  It was late at night after a tutoring session that ran long and I really needed to get the tension that had built up in my neck from slouching on my couch watching DVDs or typing with my computer in my lap (like I am doing now).  If I had mistakenly gone to a brothel, I still would have gotten a massage but it would have been a crappy one.  I had my eye out for the blind massage place.  Yeah, it’s kind of weird, but blind people in China often work as masseurs.  I had a massage by a blind person during orientation week at one of these places and it was a little creepy.  It was my first massage ever and I had just gotten to China so I didn’t realize what his signals (for me to turn over, to lie down, where to move my arms) meant and I would try to talk to him in English and use hand motions that he could not see and he couldn’t recognize that I was talking to him in the first place and not, you know, one of my English speaking friends, because he couldn’t understand me or see me looking and speaking at him.

The blind massage place in Zhangjiagang in called “Blindy Brothers Massage.”  I couldn’t find it last Thursday night but I must because I have got to find out what’s going on with that.  Do they have some hereditary disease?  Or was it like when Laura accidentally poked out the windows in my dollhouse when she was little and so I, in cold blood, poked out the windows in her dollhouse when she got one for Hanukah the next year? But with each other’s eyes?  I just think its kind of quirky to have a family business based on a physical handicap.

So I couldn’t find that place and I was afraid of the other massage places/brothels so I went to the one place that I knew was legit, One Tea One Foot.  Unfortunately this is a foot massage place that only includes a little neck action at the end.  I was curious to find out what a foot massage was like.  Some of the EF teachers in town love them.  The massage was for an hour and twenty minutes and after about five I realized that foot massages are not for me.  My feet are so sensitive and I kept on grimacing as he pummeled them.  Even now I am making a face and curling my toes.  Ouch.  Somehow, after thirty minutes of this torture that I paid for, I convinced the guy to give me a full body massage for the remaining 50 minutes and it was amazing.  He beat the crap out of me.  When I left the tension was gone but the skin on my neck and back was sensitive to the touch.  Cheap massages are definitely something China has going for it.  The best part about this particular place is that afterwards they let you pass out for as long as you want in your lazy boy chair.

This past weekend I got to see my cousin Billy.  It was so nice to see him!  On Saturday night I got to meet some of his friends from when he lived in Shanghai and catch of glimpse of what life is like for thirty-something expats.  I’ve mostly been hanging around the twenty-something crowd, all relatively new to Shanghai and China, but these guys have been here for years.  That won’t be me I’m pretty sure.  Moving to Shanghai is really going to shake things up, but I think I’m going to come home in the summer.  On the bus ride back to Zhangjiagang this weekend I read through a free English magazine for expats in Shanghai and I couldn’t believe all of the fun stuff that is going on and available to do there.  Everyone keeps saying that I’ll be a better person for living in this small town.  I’m not really sure how or why, but I do know that I am totally ready to leave it.  Only 4 weeks left!

By the way I think I’ve figured out what my true calling is.  I used to secretly think that is was to be a cult leader—if not the face then at least the right hand man, or woman rather.  But the success of this weeks’ lesson with my kids (where they race each other to the board and erase vocabulary words) has changed my career trajectory.  I’m pretty sure I was put on this earth to be a gameshow host.  Now listen, I love and respect the Bob Barkers and Chuck Woolerys of the world, but I’m going to declare it right here: the idea of a female president is all well and good, but true equality will be reached when there is a female gameshow host on prime time television.  Meredith Viera doesn’t count.  I want to be the sleazy kind of gameshow host that people make t-shirts for.

Next week Mary Beth and I are going to tag team and teach our classes together.  Fifty kids, 2 teachers, 225 square feet.  Should be exciting.

 

Rachel

P.S. Did the title make you think that at first I was going to say I wanted to be a prostitute and then a massage artist before I hit you with gameshow host?  No?  Ok.